


Transformation; Revelation

by ecotone



Category: Destiny (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-19
Updated: 2016-05-19
Packaged: 2018-06-09 03:58:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6889078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ecotone/pseuds/ecotone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Guardians are not alive, she knows. They cannot be Taken, not really.</p><p>But they are turning black and white and grey, and Eris feels a worm gnaw at the concern in her chest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Transformation; Revelation

Guardians are not alive, she knows. They cannot be Taken, not really.

Still, they are fooling with a powerful thing, stepping over a line that should not be crossed.

Months ago, when the Taken were a new and foreign presence, they were frightening. Now, they are a pest, just as the Fallen and the Cabal are annoyances that serve only to hinder the progress of reclaiming the galaxy for the Light.

Now, the Taken are familiar. They are no less foreign, however; their lines form into impossible shapes, the light around them bends and goes negative-- it is poetry, she thinks, it always has been, even though Ikora had looked at her strangely the first time she'd said it. There is no meaning to their shape; they _are_ the meaning. If that does not sound like Golden Age literature, she’ll go back into the Pit.

Maybe not.

These Guardians are foolhardy, Eris mutters to herself. She does it in the language of the Thrall, so that the new Guardian inspecting their gun near her does not understand. They glance at her, eyes wide, and she resists the urge to snort. Learning to survive amongst the enemy is not _becoming_ it, though this new face will have to learn that in due time.

She cannot deny her own foolishness, she supposes, especially when she was young. That foolishness wore a mask of bravery, one of righteousness, but she was still a fool. Foolishness is venturing down into a pit and dying, and that is what she and her teammates did. Regardless of what she thinks of them, how they live on in both her memory and the Tower’s, they were not as clever as they had thought they were.

It does not matter now, she knows. They are dead, _really_ dead, Ghosts smashed and Light eaten, and she is here, with no Light but _alive_ and with a mission. That has to be worth something, if not to the Tower and its residents than to herself.

She weighs her goals with the goals of the twitching Guardian down the hall. He is black and white and grey, form shivering and bending impossibly backwards. It is frightening, but she has seen the horrors of the Hive.

This magic is not Hive arcana, but it is similar enough. Neither subject is well researched, and both can kill a Guardian faster than a Hunter’s rifle.

 _The Taken King_. If she was a betting woman- and she had almost been, when she was a Hunter, when Omar would drag her and Sai to the lounge- she would wager that Oryx understands the Taken about as well as they do. They kneel under his banner, of course, but why? Ikora had said that the Taken were the same shape as the Black Garden’s heart. One side Hive, the other Vex. Synonyms in the book of the Darkness.

The Taken are not Darkness, though. Darkness is the absence of Light. The taken are a twisted negative, an inversion of the binary.

Nothing that should be touched. If Guardians were not dead already, the blight would have likely killed them all by now. Though, she thinks, that’s what we said when the Fallen arrived. And the Hive. And -

Alright, maybe such an invasion was more commonplace than she’d realized. Still, though, they barely understood the Cabal, and their system was simple, their rules absolute. In the face of such a complexity as _this_ \- Eris is unsure even now, and Ikora is still no better off. There is a knife, similar to the one she used to carry as a Guardian; it reminds her of Sai’s lightning and days spent in the sun. It is shaped like _home._

She hisses, and it is gone. The disadvantage of having no Ghost, she supposes, is that she is again mortal. Does that make her more human than her compatriots, though she speaks the language of the Thrall and sees as an Acolyte does?

Maybe none of them were human, not anymore. Not in any way that mattered. Humanity was the skeleton, what bound Exo and Awoken and herself to each other. They were all once alive, and they were all once human. Maybe that was enough. Jaws cannot tear through inorganic matter.

A warlock appears in front of her. They are wearing gauntlets that are black and white and grey, shifting endlessly. They buy shards from her and they shift where the gloves touch them. Eris mutters something, but it is out of habit, nothing substantial. The Warlock doesn’t acknowledge it, just nods gratefully and leaves. When she had first taken up residence at the Tower, there had been whispers about her for weeks. Months. _She will betray us all,_ they said, like she couldn’t hear. _She wants revenge for what happened. Eris Morn made a deal with a Hive God, and she will try and destroy the Light._

They were just scared of things that they didn’t understand, Ikora had told her. Eris had nodded, scratched a few more sigils into the walls of her ship. That was when she was silent, for the most part, hiding in shadows like she did in the Pit, never speaking, always watching, listening, learning. After she'd escaped, she’d been surprised her voice had still worked, that she could still speak. Part of her had thought that she could only talk in the throaty clicks of the Thrall.

Her voice was less rough now, she knew, likely from a combination of talking and the fact that she didn’t have to screech anymore.

The new Guardians would love that. Three-eyed demon, screaming in the dark. It sounded like an old Earth movie, or one of the plays the Ishtar Academy would put on. Now, Earth was a shell and Venus was a wild machine.

They had faced the same problem with the Vex, she realizes. Armor that transforms Guardians into machines, entheogens taking over their brains, their blood-

The Vex and the Taken were two sides of the same coin. A double-sided coin, if you're a Hunter. No chance left.

 _No chance_ meant many things to Eris Morn. Guardians had no chance with the Fallen, but they did; the Hive, but they did; the Vex, but they did, on and on and on. Her fireteam had stood no chance in the lair of a god. Oryx stood no chance against the Light, not when the Guardians had rigged the game, coming back again and again, flipping the coin and landing heads every time.

Maybe nothing will come of this armor, after all, for all she agonizes over it. There is a Titan standing by the entrance to the hall, fully in black and grey armor, but their helmet is off. Beside them leans a Hunter, with a shifting hood that Eris thinks she can see the stars and her past in. They are both laughing and talking and neither of them have been torn into another reality. Jaws cannot tear through what they cannot bite.

There is a knife for her, because she is mortal now, but she will not accept it. Knives are for Hunters, and she is no longer a Guardian; no longer entirely human. Eris remembers Sai’s electric blades and smiles for the first time in a long while, because she knows where her home is and no Taken King can help her get there.

**Author's Note:**

> *appears with Eris introspection* hello yes I'm back with some action-packed hard hitting stuff
> 
> anyway if Eris is a Secret Villain I'll eat my hat


End file.
